Most days it doesn’t come at all. But it likes to surprise me, to catch me out. It’s just like a sly, spiteful child. “It sets traps for me. It opened the door of my room that time, for me to walk into and bloody my nose. It moves my papers; it puts things in my path, so that I’ll stumble over them and break my neck! I don’t mind about that. It can do what it wants to me. For so long as I can keep it, you see, in my room, I can contain the infection. That’s the vital thing now, don’t you agree? To keep the source of the infection away, from my sister and my mother?
But Roderick couldn’t keep “the source of infection away”, not from his sister, his mother or even himself. For whatever it is in Hundreds Hall: madness, misfortune, or malevolence, its inhabitants would not overcome it.
A truly great ghost story, strangely reminiscent to me of Rebecca, this novel struck horror into my heart.
Dolce Bellezza 